After squandering billions of pounds they have seen the light, thank heavens. England’s great landscapes may be spared more futile despoliation at taxpayers’ expense.
But the turbines that already exist will stand to mock us for years to come, most of them generating scarcely enough electricity to power their manufacturers’ production lines.

There are 6,846 across Britain, plus another 15,000 private installations. Each one is a monument to the follies a government can commit when given a green flag to squander our cash.

This post confirms what most of us suspect based on the history of global surface temperature data responses to strong El Niño events. That is, if global surface temperatures respond similarly to past strong El Niños, the 2016 values should be higher than 2015.

TABLE OF SURFACE TEMPERATURES DURING EVOLUTION AND DECAY YEARS OF STRONG EL NIÑOS, AND THEIR DIFFERENCE

Table 1 lists the global temperature anomalies from GISS, NOAA NCEI and UKMO for the evolution and decay years, and their differences, during the eight strong El Niño events of 1957/58, 1965/66, 1972/73, 1982/83, 1987/88, 1991/92, 1997/98, and 2009/10. I’ve also listed the 2015 values for the 2015/16 El Niño. For this discussion, I’ve defined a strong El Niño as one where the peak NOAA Oceanic NINO Index value equals or exceeds 1.5 deg C. The annual global temperature anomaly values are as provided by…

The death of the wind industry didn’t come about because BIG Coal felt ‘threatened‘ and set out in some kind of John Grisham conspiracy to wreck it by fair means or foul. No. What kills it is the fact that a growing band of ‘eco-travellers’ – of the kind who once placed their faith in the Wind Gods – have woken up to the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud.

From the “murder rate must be highest near the equator” department comes this odd piece of research

Researchers offer new theory on how climate affects violence Climate impacts life strategies, time orientation, self-control

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Researchers have long struggled to explain why some violent crime rates are higher near the equator than other parts of the world. Now, a team of researchers have developed a model that could help explain why.

This new model goes beyond the simple fact that hotter temperatures seem to be linked to more aggressive behavior.

The researchers believe that hot climates and less variation in seasonal temperatures leads to a faster life strategy, less focus on the future, and less self-control – all of which contribute to more aggression and violence.

“Climate shapes how people live, it affects the culture in ways that we don’t think about in our daily lives,”…

At a forum on Wednesday hosted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, several climate activists including Naomi Oreskes and representatives from the Union of Concerned Scientists admitted that they have been meeting with the state Attorneys General launching climate RICO investigations for over a year.

The fact that the AGs have been meeting with Oreskes is pretty telling considering that for years she has been spearheading the effort to find a way to prosecute oil companies under RICO laws. She’s author of Merchants of Doubt, a book published in 2010 that attempts to link ExxonMobil to tobacco companies. She’s also on the board of the Climate Accountability Institute (CAI), the group that organized the now infamous 2012 La Jolla Conference with the Union of Concerned Scientists at which activists brainstormed ways they could launch racketeering investigations into ExxonMobil. The New York Timeseven credits…

The entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.

In the attached picture, recently taken in Sweden, freezing cold weather has caused the rotor blades of a wind turbine to ice up bringing the blades to a complete stop.

To fix the “problem” a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.

The aviation fuel, the diesel for the truck, and the oil burned to heat the water, could produce more electricity (at the right time to meet demand) than the unfrozen wind turbine could ever produce. (Before it freezes up again).